Will Governor Daugaard mention the beef plant corporate welfare when Aberdeen is ‘Capital for a Day’?

Next week it is Aberdeen’s turn to be “Capital for a Day”. Here is a portion of the news release posted on the South Dakota website:

Activities for the day include a main street walk, tours around town, meetings and a fair walk. Citizens are encouraged to attend the community roundtable meeting to discuss workforce, recruitment and training. This will be held at the Brown County Fairgrounds Clubhouse from 1 – 2 p.m. CDT.

…

The day concludes with a fair walk at 2:00 p.m., where constituents can talk with Gov. Dennis Daugaard.

The beef plant laying off its workforce last month is a large and recent enough issue to bring up at this community roundtable. As the release says this community roundtable will be used to “discuss workforce, recruitment and training”. This may be a good chance for Aberdeen as a community to bring forth answers (although if I goes like most townhall meetings I’ve been to it won’t really accomplish anything).

But after the townhall meeting Governor Daugaard will be going for a walk and talking with constituents. This would be the perfect time to find out if the Governor understands the dangers of large operations such as the beef plant being completely supported by taxpayer and greencard dollars.

However, I do not expect that to happen. As a true backer of corporate welfare I expect Governor Daugaard will find non-government issues to blame the failed beef plant on. He will also fail to share the blame with bad business decisions made at the plant (why make good business decisions when its the taxpayer dollars your playing with). Instead I expect the Governor to channel the favored progressive economist Paul Krugman. A couple of weeks ago Krugman had this to say about Detroit:

…for the most part the city was just an innocent victim of market forces.

I am betting if Daugaard will answer questions about the beef plant failing (after being built and supported with corporate welfare) the answer will involved the “free market” and make it sound as if nobody could have foreseen this tragedy. Sadly that may sound like the “truth” to someone who loves to use taxpayer dollars for subsidizing favored special interests. However, those of us that care about fiscal responsibility can see this situation, just as with Detroit, has nothing to do with “market forces”. In this case an inept management team being supported by government bureaucrats (backed by elected officials coming with gifts of taxpayer dollars) were the only real “forces” that are to blame..

If Daugaard does not start to become the conservative Republican he pretends to be (although honestly he doesn’t try too hard) maybe it is further proof South Dakota needs a libertarian Governor. I could be wrong. He might have good answers. But I think it more likely he will find ways to avoid touching any real corporate welfare topics. Maybe I’ll have to leave my fair booth for a while next Friday afternoon.

PS. He could try blame this on Rounds because that is who was governor when this beef plant fiasco started. But that doesn’t excuse Daugaard’s continued support of Rounds actions at the beef plant. It is also unlikely he will attack Rounds going into the election season.